Microsoft has signed a deal for 362,000 tons of carbon removal credits, delivered by planting new forests in the US. The cloud giant has signed a 15-year agreement to support the largest certified afforestation project in the US, being carried out by Chestnut Carbon, a nature-based carbon removal company, which has eight parcels of land mostly in Arkansas. Chestnut is financed by Kimmeridge Energy Management. Removal of carbon from the atmosphere is seen as essential to meet net-zero targets, and Microsoft has pledged to be carbon-negative by 2030. Carbon credits and offsets backed by forestry projects have come in for criticism, as environmentalists point out that claims to leave trees unfelled do not create additional forests, and may even be temporary. Chestnut points out that it is making new forests on land previously used for other purposes, and are “additional, verifiable and biodiverse to accelerate the path to net zero across a range of industries.”

See original press release: Chestnut Carbon to Deliver High-Quality Carbon Removal Credits through a Multi-year Offtake Agreement with Microsoft